Swan Falls Dam on the Snake River, Idaho

Just after Thanksgiving my father, youngest brother, and I walked across Swan Falls Dam on the Snake River southwest of Boise, Idaho and hiked for a few sunny hours along the river and the basalt cliffs that form the canyon walls.  It was a wonderfully crisp day and the cold wind, sweet with the fragrance of big sagebrush tugging at one's clothes and washing over one's face, was a long-anticipated soul-cleansing.  Cold-smudged by Nature in the dry desert of SW Idaho, as it were.

This area of the Snake River lies within the 600,000 acre (Morley) Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, home to the most diverse and dense concentration of raptors in the United States.  Among the 24 species of raptors encountered in the cliff and tablelands are peregrine and prairie falcons, the American Kestrel (also a falcon); red-tailed, ferruginous, Swainson's, sharp-shinned and rough-legged hawks; the golden eagle, and the northern harrier.  We saw quite a few common ravens on that cold day, but few raptors.  Along the cliffs high above the river we encountered many fish bones - evidence the birds were catching or scavenging fish from the river and taking them to safe perches in the cliffs to consume them or to feed to nestlings.  Favored perches were identifiable by the white stains on the cliffs below choice alcoves and/or nest sites.  At one site at the base of a cliff formed from water-lain ash and basalt cobbles I found a collection of owl pellets and jawbones of the Piute/Townsend ground squirrels that are so ubiquitous on the flat tablelands above the canyon.  Great horned and great gray owls are found here as well, as well as diminutive burrowing owls that inhabit abandoned ground squirrel or badger burrows on the flatlands about the canyon.  Morlan "Morley" Nelson was a famed falconer and tireless champion of raptor rehabilitation, preservation and research who lived in my home town of Boise until his death in 2005.  It is quite fitting that this important conservation area is named after him.

Portrait of a happy hiker.  It was so nice to go a-walking with Dad and Brother, to exert myself in the cold air.  Toward the end of the hike we flushed two big mule deer.  They bounded away with effortless speed and purpose that was the picture of grace and strength and agility.  Would that we humans could move like that through the world.  The graceful part, anyway.  We might, if we tried harder in body and spirit, I say.

As a parting gesture, or following a personal tradition, rather, I gathered a shock of sagebrush to take back to Florida before we left the area - one of my favorite fragrances in the whole world to savor in the weeks and months ahead, and to perhaps smudge my 1935 frame house with.  A strong reminder and precious memory cue of my happy youth in the West, the sweet smell of my home country.